For this project, 4th Grade students learned about bilateral symmetry by doing oil pastel drawings of beetles.

To begin this project, each student got to select an image of a beetle that they liked. I had color printed images of about 20 different beetles for students to choose from.Once they selected their image, I showed them how to fold the paper on the line of symmetry down their beetle so that once folded, the image was mirrored on each side of the paper. Next they folded the image in half long ways.One 4th grade class used black paper for the project and the other gray. We used 12"x18" construction paper. After folding the photograph image, students folded their construction paper in the same manner. In half long ways, then short ways to create four quadrants.

To begin the drawing, students kept the beetle image folded so that they were looking at the top right quadrant and I demonstrated how to fill the space on the same quadrant of the construction paper using this grid drawing technique to make the image much larger.​First, 4th graders drew their image with pencil. They did both right hand quadrants then opened the paper up and drew the rest of the beetle.

After completing the pencil drawings, students used oil pastels to create these colorful beetle beauties.

The first step with oil pastels was to pick a color that would show up well on the construction paper and outline the beetle.

Next, I really emphasized that the students be observational artists and try to mimic the colors that they saw in the photographs. This meant that students had really think about WHERE they were using WHAT colors. This also meant that students had to layer colors and blend colors.

The last step of this project was to create a fun colorful border. Not every one had a chance to do this because they took longer on their beetle drawing, but most had time.

We used 18"x24" construction paper to make the borders. Students used oil pastel to make colorful repeating patterns to go around their beetle drawings. I love how they turned out with the beetles.

I was super proud of the 4th graders on this project! The beetles turned out great and it was really neat watching the students really focus on replicating detail that they saw in the photographs! Fun project!